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Thursday, December 30, 2010

Thursday, December 30, 2010

What would happen if every baker on earth...[dramatic voice]...disappeared?

This isn't the story of how they might vanish. It's what happens to the cakes they leave behind. This is just part of the journey that will take us to the future of once active bakeries, as well as haunting sites already devoid of taste. Welcome to earth, population: zero.

Eww, but still, I have not been put off cake. I've been reading your blog for ages now, and just wanted to say I think its amazing and you're a really great writer! I cannot believe how many bad cakes there are out there, wow.

With the exception of the Twinkie cake, they all appear to be from non-US bakeries (and the two with river rock from the same bakery). However, it is a good lesson for all of us who work and/or own businesses to look though the eyes of a potential customer. Would someone want to come into our business? Would they want to buy our products as displayed? Would they want to hurl looking at them? Time to vacuum and dust, people.

This post is hilarious! I can't imagine anyone in his/her right mind actually eating anything coming from a bakery that had a display like this... except for the Twinkie cake. Those would be popular where I come from.

You could also add alongside the picture of the twinkie cake, the picture of the cheeto "cake" made to celebrate the male life being given by a coworker of mine. She pretty much lives on artificial cheese whether found in frozen mac 'n cheese or cheetos, so the gathering of cheetos into tiers and putting ribbon on to make look like a cake alongside the dish of homemade mac 'n cheese was probably her idea of heaven. The rest of us just hoped she thought we were laughing with her.

I totally want to make a cake out of Twinkies! In fact, I think I'm going to recommend it as a wedding cake option for the next friends who get married. That way they will still have viable cake to eat on their anniversaries for the rest of their natural lives!

Is it my imagination or do the first and third cakes appear to be from the same bakery? And the fourth and fifth cakes seem to be from the same bakery. So hopefully there are only 3 bakeries involved in these sad disasters.

WV: bectann: a new medicine devised for people who eat cakes that have been around for a little too long.

Another hilarious post - and I'm delighted to finally not be the only person I know who's been morbidly fascinated with the Life After People series! I mean, really, what's the deal with that show - are we talking about the Rapture or something? From the start of the first episode, we see land-line phones dangling from their cords and food still sizzling on the stove in mid-preparation, but the people are just... abruptly... gone... leaving no messy corpses behind to clutter things up. Weird. Still, it seems like I just can't... stop... watching...

8-/

WV: "seigall"

I don't know about you, but I "seigall", and a lot of it, in the attitudes of these bakery owners toward the upkeep of their displays!

Heh, the dust and grime on the bottom layer of the first cake made it blend in so well with the tray it was on that at first glance I thought, "Oh, one year after bakers, survivors get so desparate for cake they start frosting and decorating irons."

I love the Twinkie cake. That's the only one that looks (or smells) like you could still eat it 10,000 years later. :) Kinda like Sally Davies 6 month old happy meal http://www.flickr.com/photos/sallydavies/sets/72157624739645253/, or Dennis Stoltzfoos' 15 year old CUPCAKES http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/2010/10/1995-and-counting-nondecomposing/Credit to Sarah of thehealthyhomeecomomist.com for links from her page

And I, too, want to know where the health inspectors are! I run a small bookstore and sell candy bars and lollipops... all wrapped goods. And I still have to pay a $150 "food handler's fee" and suffer an annual inspection by the Inspector. These cakes would never get by him!

WV: "mortsp" - Mort (Death) has more assistants than just Death of Rats - there's also Mortsp - Death of Cakes!

With the exception of the Twinkie cake, they all appear to be from non-US bakeries ...

How the heck can you tell??? Crappy food prep/storage hygiene is everywhere. It knows no boundaries.

The twinkie cake is cute ... except for all the chemicals I know are in those things. And no, eating them will not make you live longer, it will just preserve your body longer after you die. No joke. Believe it or not, humans (on average) now take between 3 and 7 years longer to fully decompose compared to what we did 50 years ago, solely because of all the chemicals in our diets. Gross, huh?

And am in shock that these are bakeries that are still in business. Seriously, if their freshly decorated cakes are so much worse than these battered aged specimens, I'm sticking with Costco or Loblaws (I'm depressed to report I've never seen a wreck in their displays) or a really good local bakery I know of. Or making my own. (They're not pretty-- I have minimal decorating skills-- but they taste great)

And if these bakeries LOOK that bad, can you imagine how their cakes taste?

Back in the 1970s when I was in college, I used to go by this bakeshop every day while I lived in Toronto (on or near St. Clair Ave). The cakes in the window could have been decades old. I wonder if it is still there and still has the same cakes! In fact, I wonder if these are those cakes?????

While I was still in high school, for a few months, I travelled from Ottawa to Toronto on the Voyageur bus. There was, for many, many years, a truck stop along Highway 7 called "The Whispering Pines" (I called it "The Withering Pines" because of the food) where the buses would stop for a break.

The first weekend, I was perusing the desserts in the cooler and noticed a piece of cherry cheesecake with a fork stuck in it in such a way that the cake had cracked. At the end of the weekend, on my return trip, I noticed the same piece in the same corner of the cooler... and again at the next weekend.... and the one after that.... it was there for the full six weeks that I travelled back and forth.

The Whispering Pines closed quite a few years later.... I wonder if it was because someone finally ate that piece of cheesecake?

That Twinkie cake makes me think of the Family Guy episode when after Y2K the Griffins search out the Twinkie factory because they know they'll survive anything!

As for the other cakes... I guess these bakeries haven't changed or updated their designs in a dog's age, you know, since they don't feel the need to take these hockey pucks out for a cleaning or even to replace them with newer ones.

I always knew twinkies never die. Scary that these places have not changed their displays in decades. Makes one wonder how old their wreckerators are cause maybe they are immortal. Now that would be horrifying lol.

Y'know, the twinkie cake actually is kinda cool looking! But, uh, we know what this stuff does for your arteries. Honestly though, it gave me the idea: if you can't bake, just take a whole lot of mini pastries and stick them together like some kind of sculpture - heck - then you can put in a whole bunch of tastes and flavors to accommodate everyone's cake likings! Right?

Aw, man, the one day I leave town, I miss another neglected display cake post. Anyway, I think Napoleon Dynamite had a word that would aptly describe these: "decroded."

According to a comment from the last one of these posts, display cakes are real frosting on top of an artificial base, like styrofoam or something. So how lazy/cheap do these bakers have to be to not just hose them off and re-ice them every few weeks or so? Honestly.

I was walking along a street in London looking for a snack and saw a bakery. I decided not to go in when I saw those first three cakes in the window. Although I did consider going in to tell them that I had decided not to go in. Conundrum?

I took the picture of the second cake in Otavalo, Ecuador at a local bakery. They must have seen me taking pictures and then they felt guilty, because the next day, this cake and others like it had been removed from the window display!

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